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Can any of the tech nerds on this site recommend a reasonably high-powered computer? My laptop died two weeks ago, and my 10-year-old desktop just isn’t working out for me. Despite commenting on a Rationalist-diaspora forum, I’ll admit to my shame that I know almost nothing about computers, and I’ve pretty quickly become overwhelmed by the staggering number of options for each and every component part.
What I’m looking for is a machine that can ideally simultaneously handle several open Word documents, Excel spreadsheets, image files, and PDFs, one or two PowerPoint presentations, an ungodly number of open tabs spread throughout multiple windows and likely across several browsers (including several active windows that are absolute memory hogs), a CAD program, SoundCloud, and a couple of other minor programs on a rotation basis. My budget is roughly $1,500–$2,500, though I’m open to being told that I need to increase it. I basically want a machine that will handle everything I throw at it and won’t die or get completely bogged down at any point in the next 15 years.
I don’t mind buying either a desktop (in which case I’d supplement with a cheap laptop for those few occasions when I’d need one) or a laptop. In either case, I’ll be hooking up several monitors, a keyboard, and a mouse. Also, I know it’s a bad time to be buying a lot of memory, but that unfortunately can’t be helped. Finally, without any additional information, I was planning on just picking one of the recommended gaming desktops on a review site, but I’m hoping someone here can tell me if that’s a good idea or not.
You're running Windows, I presume? Is portability a concern for you?
I am quite happy with my Asus Z13 Flow with two exceptions: it's quite noisy under load and it eats through its battery quickly even when idling. However, it can handle anything you throw at it.
My laptop was a Mac and my current desktop runs Windows 10. I have found over the years that are very few occasions when I actually need a laptop, so portability isn’t much of a worry. I’ll have to look into the Asus though.
Framework Desktop has the same guts in desktop format, but you can get a better or cheaper desktop if you build it yourself. I agree with @netstack's assessment that the 1500 and 1700 tiers at LI are good.
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